Access to sustainable electrification: Bridging the financial and entrepreneurial gap & Boosting the Clean Development Mechanism

19 Jun 2012 - 19 Jun 2012
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM

Rio de Janeiro

The side event offers the opportunity to introduce the Clean Energy Access Mechanism, otherwise called the CDM PLUS mechanism.

The Clean Energy Access Mechanism aims to develop international public-private partnerships to spark socially responsible investments for vulnerable countries? access to electrification, focusing on rural, isolated regions. The projected mechanism proposes mobilizing ?new and additional? funding to fulfill the objective of universal access to electricity, complementary to traditional financing mechanisms such as development aid, international finance institutions and carbon finance.

The goal is to foster the creation of not-for-profit foundations, affiliated to regulated electric utilities from the industrialized countries, in order to finance electrification investments relying on renewable technologies. The so calledFoundations for Clean Electrificationwill be financed by a universal contribution levied on regulated tariffs, financed by consumers. The scheme is similar to existing contributions,already familiar to electric utilities for rural/urban tariff perequation; subsidization of renewable energies (e.g. feed-in tariffs). Also, the utilities, through their affiliate foundations, will have the opportunity to send technical teams on temporary assignments in developing countries for an efficient transfer of technology and electrification methodology.

The CDM PLUS also offers a scheme for boosting the existing CDM mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol by addressing its major flaws: few projects benefit to the vulnerable countries and even fewer to the poorest regions of these countries: on a total of 3,952 project registered at the CDM Board today, only 85 are located in Africa, only a few of them devoted to energy. Most of the projects dedicated to rural electrification do not pass through the commercial profitability threshold of private companies and financial markets. Small-scale projects need fast-track, accelerated, simplified procedures and also a much larger incentives than those generated by the CERs carbon credits generated.

The CDM PLUS mechanism would be enacted into an international convention signed under the UNFCCC: ?The signatory parties of the Clean Energy Access Convention (countries members of Annex B of the UNFCCC) will institute in their national legislation a provision authorizing public utilities, on a voluntary basis, to allocate a fraction of the regulated tariff to subsidizing affiliate foundations dedicated to investment in rural electrification using renewable resources?.

To monitor the Mechanism, and to measure progress, an international agency, devoted to the promotion of universal energy access, should be instituted with the following tasks: establishing a systematic review of progress, targets, milestones, deadlines; arbitration of potential conflicts between international investors and concessional authorities; accounting of financial North-South transfers parallel to the Green Climate Fund. The new institution could take place within existing UN agencies or the proposed OrganisationMondiale de l?Environnement.

Twenty years after the Earth Summit in Rio where the UNFCCC was enacted, the CDM PLUS project would transform the international solidarity objectives into concrete realizations, bringing clean kilowatt hours to poor populations presently deprived of access.

The side event will give the floor to presentation of successful experiences and best practices, evaluation of needs and amounts to be invested, the proposed financial mechanism using innovative and additional resources, concessional schemes for rural electrification, etc.

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- Christian Stoffaës, Representative of the Mission CDM PLUS, Report Access to sustainable electrification
A 1% levy on the electricity tariff to reach universal electrification by 2030: presentation of the Clean Energy Access Mechanism
- Bernard Saincy, Director Corporate Social Responsibility at GDF SUEZ
The rural electrification experience of a major utility GDF SUEZ, through the Foundation Rassembleursd?énergies. How can a large company develop small-scale local projects? Whatcanitexpect in return?
- Denis Cohen, President of Droit à l?énergie
The need for specific know-how and technology transfer for rural electrification in developing countries.
- Gilles Vermot-Desroches, Director Sustainable Development at Schneider Electric
- Vanessa Miler, Representative of the Direction Générale de l?Energie et du Climat and the Paris-Nairobi Initiative at the french Ministry of Ecology
- Jean-Claude Lenoir, french Senator